Boardings continue to drop in Tupelo

Airline boardings continue to fall at Tupelo Regional Airport, where Silver Airways began service four months ago.
Boardings in Tupelo last month were 387, down 39 percent from a year earlier.
Silver boarded 415 passengers in December, 454 in November and 476 in October.
The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based airline in October began a two-year, $16.5 million federal subsidized plan to provide air service in Greenville, Tupelo, Hattiesburg/Laurel and Meridian.
In Tupelo, it provides 18 round-trip flights a week to Atlanta. There are three flights on weekdays, two on Saturday and one on Sunday.
Silver’s flights are aboard 34-passenger Saab 340 turboprop aircraft. Last year, Delta flew 50-passenger regional jets, with 15 weekly flights between Tupelo and Memphis.
For all of 2012, Tupelo Regional logged 8,232 boardings, a 31 percent drop from a year earlier.
Separately, Silver Airways on Monday announced it had been named the 2012 “Regional Airline of the Year” by Air Transport World.
The monthly publication cited Silver’s “outstanding growth and achievements, as well as its contributions toward elevating the overall regional aviation industry.”
Silver, the company noted, was the first U.S-based airline to win the award since 2008.
dennis.seid@journalinc.com